Broken (12 page)

“Don’t you dare give up on me, Sam,” he whispered tightly.

“Never will,” she smiled thumbing tears off his cheeks. “Some things are beyond our control, we both know that. You know I love you. You and Pete are my best friends, and I love him too, but you, you’re my ‘first person’. You’re the first person I think of when I wake up in the morning, the first person I need to see to make my day complete, the first person I think of when I need comfort and when I want to share a laugh, you ARE my ‘first person.’ And I just want to make sure you know it.” She stroked his cheek, then turned with him back toward the SUV.

They pulled away from the scene passing a side street filled with parked vehicles. Some belonging to local residents and some to on-lookers, among them sat a nondescript, black utility van.

The turmoil in the detective’s belly, and his need to ensure that nothing happened to the woman he had every intention of marrying, kept his focus straight ahead. Neither he nor Sam noticed the Glen Falls native with the bud in his ear simply sitting back in the shadows; nor did either of them or anyone else notice when, a short time later, the van pulled into traffic, knowing exactly where to go.

--

“I’m so beat,” Sam sighed wearily, leaning against the wall while Jase opened the door to Pete’s place.

Nodding, he ushered her inside “I’ll bet,” then locked the door and made a bee line for the fridge closing drapes and shades along the way.

Yanking the door open, he grabbed a couple beers, then grimaced, slamming it quickly closed with wide disbelieving eyes, “I think something moved in there. Where’s the cat?” he asked, looking around.

“On the entertainment center,” she nodded, opening her bottle, “…and yeah, whatever’s in the back there, I really just couldn’t go far enough to clean the fridge. I did get rid of about two months worth of empties, though,” she leaned back against the counter.

Her throaty declaration was all he needed. He bent, grasping her to him, and with her legs wrapped around his waist, devoured her on the way to the couch.

9

After backing the van into the breezeway, Randy popped a round into the chamber of his .9mm, set the safety and tucked it into the shoulder holster he wore beneath the jumpsuit. He pocketed the silencer, then loaded the dart gun with both shots, knowing he’d likely have to be faster than he was used to. That gun went into the pocket of the jumpsuit.

Steeling himself for what was about to happen, what he was about to do, he went over it a couple times in his mind.
Two shots to the patio door, site them, dart him first, sorry man, then her. Get out fast. Easy.

With a nod of self-assurance, he slid out the back of the van and found a deep shadow against the neighboring building’s brick wall.

Huh, that’s the same one we have,
he noted the cast iron patio set,
alright then, if the glass doesn’t come down fast, I can toss one of the chairs through it, cool.

Shadows moving behind the drapes caught his attention. The silhouette of Sam’s legs clasped around the detective’s waist, their bodies pressed tightly together while he carried her to the living room, was unmistakable.

He nodded,
alright, I can give you that,
internally acknowledging the detective’s physical needs, all the while keeping his eyes glued to their outlines.

He watched the man draw her off the couch, watched his hands glide over her breasts before sliding under her shirt. then he saw the shirt take flight across the room.

His breath started coming short as he watched the man stroke her with hand and mouth until her shadow panted enticingly, her head thrown back with her arms around the man’s neck, drawing him close.

“
Are you ready?”

His head snapped up, his eyes darting around the yard in an instant of panic before he recognized the voice in his head.

“Oh God, not now.” He whispered.

“
Ready,” his nearly adolescent voice agreed, resigned.

A warm, tangy pulse brought him to life within the jumpsuit, “MMm,” he breathed, sliding the zipper slowly down as the woman mounted the detective. He could almost feel the man’s hips thrust into her as her head fell back and the cop came forward, his mouth fixing onto her breast as their shadows seemed to bob on a tide only they could feel.

“
Oooh, yes, that’s my young man, you’re such a beautiful boy.”

His hand wrapped around his erect shaft, already dripping with moisture as he worked himself in time with the shadows.

“
Beautiful, young man,” her tongue flicked out against his lips as she guided him into her. Her leg drew him close as she traced his midline, taunting him with her fingertips until he could barely breathe for the sweet agony pulsing through him.

“
Such a good boy,” she grinned, sliding her finger into him in time with the beating of her hips. He could feel himself starting to clench around her, and whimpered with unfulfilled need as she withdrew the digit, her smile fairly glowed as her walls clamped around him, but that wasn’t what he wanted.

“
Eric, now,” she panted, with a glance over Randy’s shoulder.

‘…
that’s what I want. I want my little bear.’ he remembered thinking as those gentle hands came around him, sliding over his chest and belly, down to tease the root of his erection, and finally moving between his legs to that perfect spot that only his brother could find so unerringly.

Lips fell to his neck, puckering against the back just before a tender nip, and a flashing stroke of the tongue as the younger man’s finger slipped inside, sweeping him perfectly.

“
Oh, God, Eric, yes!” he cried. His hips thrust forward, his member filling the woman beneath him. But he didn’t care. What he wanted was behind him, tormenting him, teasing him sweetly with every means at his disposal.

“
How’s that, Big Bear, is that what you like?” Eric whispered, wrapping his lips around the lobe of his ear while his moistened head pushed faintly forward.

“
Eric, please…” he whimpered, thrusting forward, harder, faster, the woman beneath him lost in her own ecstasy, panting and writhing, her hands gliding now along her youngest son’s center line, her fingers taunting him as his aching, straining erection filled his big brother.

“
God!” Randy cried as his release shot uncontrollably into the woman, his hips pounding against her while his breath shuddered and sobs shook him.

“
I gotcha, Big Bear, I gotcha.” Eric breathed into his ear so only Randy could hear, while on the floor of the barn Sandy writhed and gasped her own orgasm.

Eric’s chest rose and fell behind Randy, his breath gentle in his ear, his hands softly stroking all those soothing places from his big brother’s root all the way up to his neck.

“
I gotcha.” He pressed his lips against Randy’s neck gently, over and over again until Randy slid from their mother.

Spent, he turned in Eric’s embrace, capturing his mouth with earnest desperation, driving him down to the floor, tasting the young man, soothing him with hot kisses down to that immature shaft while his hands gave back to the boy.

Panting his release, Randy wiped his eyes and zipped the jumpsuit back up, leaning heavily on the wall, watching the silhouettes finish through half-lidded eyes while his mind lingered blissfully on the memory of the taste of the man he loved.

--

Smiling loosely, Jase filled their mugs with tea just as Sam returned from the bathroom.

“Has Pete called, yet?” she asked.

Jase shook his head, “He’ll probably be at the station for a while taking care of the paperwork.” A streak of orange shot across the floor into Pete’s bedroom at the same time the patio door shattered in a waterfall of glass.

Jase felt like he was moving through molasses as he shoved Sam toward the bedroom and lurched for the kitchen chair his holster was draped over. The drape blew aside in perfect timing as something pink streaked through the air, a hard stab shot into his chest, rocking him backwards, away from the possibility of his gun.

Another streak of pink tore across his line of sight, a twin to the dart in his body wedged into Sam’s hip as the impact threw her down to the floor.

Blackness closed like an iris, narrowing his field of vision as he watched his fingers clutch at the floor, trying to drag him to his gun, but his head was stuffed and his senses began to shut down one by one. All the detective could see was a tall muscular man in a dark colored jumpsuit stride to Sam, sling her over his shoulder and turn to stand before him.

“You’ll thank me when it’s over,” the man with clear green eyes and thick drug-heavy voice nodded. “You don’t know what she comes from, it’s not your fault,” he assured the rapidly fading detective before turning and vanishing back through the patio door.

In less than thirty seconds, everything that truly mattered to Detective Jason Michael Edwards was torn from his world while he lay impotent on the floor.

No, I won’t let it…
he protested inside, gritting his teeth, fighting whatever was in that dart until his fingers closed over the phone cord. He rolled away from the wall where it was mounted and prayed it didn’t break as it shot off the base toward him, a chunk of the housing splintered, sending a chip of plastic ricocheting across the tile, but even so, he could hear a dial tone.
Not because of ME!

Using every last ounce of focus he had, he forced his fingers to hit 911 before succumbing to the effects of the tranquilizer.

--

“Ray!” Pete called. “Under the table,” he motioned to the forensic specialist, who quickly spotted the fuzzy tipped dart and placed a numbered tent card next to it. “I want to know everything from who loaded it to who owns it, ASAP,” he instructed.

“You got it,” he confirmed, letting Pete turn back to Jase who was strapped in on the EMT’s gurney, only his eyes able to convey anything yet.

“I want an artist waiting at the hospital for when he can talk again,” Captain Zegler instructed the uniformed officer who’d been first to respond to the 911 call, “and I want every door in a two block radius pounded on until somebody finds someone who saw SOMETHING, is that clear!?”

“Yes sir,” the patrolman nodded.

Pete stayed beside the gurney until they were at the rear of the ambulance, the fear, guilt and remorse in his partner’s eyes easily visible, even if the slip of a couple tears hadn’t given it away. He knuckled the track dry and leaned in.

“We’ll find her; just give Helmie every fucking detail about the S.O.B. you can remember as soon as you can.”

All he could do was blink before the EMTs looked askance at Pete who nodded, “Yeah, get him back in the game as fast as possible.” Then to his partner, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

--

Randy crept through the shadows toward the Parker barn, hoping that the cold of an October night on the relatively flat Iowa plain would have kept the teens away, in search of warmer places like the back seat of a car.

Please, I need it to be here,
he prayed, moving to the side door and slipping the peg from the wire eye that held it closed.

The shifting layers of darkness that pressed into his eyes was exactly what he needed as he searched the barn quickly, ensuring there were no children crashed or clumsily teaching each other the rituals of sex in even the recesses.

Memories flew, whispering through his mind, some pleasant, some deeply humiliating and painful, but the one that drew him here overflowed with self-empowerment.

He wandered through the barn, orienting himself, his flashlight caressing one of the beams, finding the near side of a ‘Y’ joint. He stepped up to the beam, his expression warm, gentle and nearly glowing with love. Amid the hundreds of moments captured, either in permanent marker or carved into the wood itself, by almost an entire generation of teens from two counties, he found what he was looking for. Carved into the wood was just another mark of passage to everyone else, but to them, it was a secret declaration of lifelong devotion- ‘R + E 4 Evr’ -that only they would understand.

He often wondered if Eric had ever really understood just what carving that had truly meant to him. He knew that after that last afternoon, the pain of rejection in his little brother’s eyes was something he hadn’t been able to bear.
Thank God he forgave me, thank you, Eric, you’ve always been my hero.

Moving toward the main doors, he unlocked them.

Leaving the way he’d come in, he unrolled a square of tarp someone had long ago tacked up over the rear window, then pinned that down. Once outside, he slipped the peg back into the eye and went to get the car.

While moving through Bakerstown, he’d dumped the van, trading it for a sedan that could not be traced to him. He’d left Sam in the trunk while checking out the barn and now, with his privacy assured in the place where he long ago declared his freedom, he locked the doors and set to work.

The Parker family died out over a generation ago and, though the land belonged to the state, they hadn’t done anything with it yet.

In the summer months, stoner kids hung out there getting wasted and taking their first sexual steps, but in the winter it was far too cold for those kinds of shenanigans, a fact he knew well. He also knew it would serve his purposes and allow him plenty of time to send his message out into the world.